Our Hand Paladin deck list guide features the best deck list for Season 66 of Saviors of Uldum (September 2019). Our Hand Paladin guide will be updated with Mulligan advice, card combos and strategy tips.

Hand Paladin is a Hearthstone deck that makes use of a number of cards from the entire collection to provide lots of buffing options, both directly from your hand and on board. In this way, you hope to be able to field a much tougher board of minions that your opponent will struggle to deal with, while you yourself maintain a solid health total.

In our guide to playing this archetype, we've got an outline of the best deck list for this stage of the Saviors of Uldum meta. With many of the new cards added in Saviors of Uldum, it seemed like there was some potential for the deck to take off in the new expansion. Whilst Hand Paladin hasn’t taken the metagame by storm, we’ve still seen a decent bit of experimentation with it. New token generating cards added in Saviors of Uldum like Sandwasp Queen, as well as decent card draw in Salhet's Pride and the buffed Crystology make this deck a solid midrange choice that can hoard board control if your opponent isn’t prepared.

Hand Paladin deck list and strategy

Hand Paladin isn't really a big part of the meta right now, but you’ll enjoy the wins when they do come. Playing your cards right and maximising the utility of your various buff cards requires some astute decision making on your part, so you might want to get some practice in early. If that tickles your fancy, here’s the top deck list currently seeing play.

Paladin

Neutral

2 x Brazen Zealot

2 x Beaming Sidekick

2 x Crystology

2 x Jar Dealer

2 x Sandwasp Queen

2 x Faceless Rager

2 x Salhet's Pride

2 x Magic Carpet

2 x Blessing of Kings

2 x Ravencaller

2 x Truesilver Champion

2 x Twilight Drake

2 x Glowstone Technician

1 x Leeroy Jenkins

1 x Zilliax

2 x Mountain Giant

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Hand Paladin takes all of those seemingly inconsequential minions in your hand and turns them into terrifying forces to be reckoned with, thanks to all the buffing cards available to the class. You can apply these buffs both during the minion’s time in your hand and after it’s been played onto the board, keeping your opponents guessing.

This deck is full of good targets for your various buffs. Got a hand filled with 1-cost minions? Glowstone Technician is your best friend. Need to push face damage before your opponent can stabilise? Beef up a friendly minion with Blessing of Kings or whack them in the face with a Truesilver Champion. You’ve got a whole host of cards that generate other cards too, so keep an eye out for opportunities to increase the health of your Twilight Drake or get a tasty discount on your Mountain Giant.

Early Game: You’re trying to get on board as early as possible and force your opponent into suboptimal plays. Maybe they have to make a bad trade to avoid your Brazen Zealot getting too big, or perhaps they have to use a board clear spell early if you get a few cheap minions down. Beaming Sidekick makes these small minions a bit sturdier, allowing you to control the board, make good value trades and remain in control of the early game. The likes of Sandwasp Queen and Jar Dealer add extra ammunition to your hand, meaning you shouldn’t run out of cards to play and annoy your opponent with.

Mid Game: Now’s the time to get your bigger players onto the battlefield. Assuming you’ve maintained a decent hand size, your Twilight Drake should get itself a bunch of health and be sticky as all hell. Mountain Giant will be discounted too - a massively powerful play so early in the game. Of course, Faceless Rager combines brilliantly with these two cards too, as it can copy their high health stat. With 5 attack, this can be really scary for opponents, albeit susceptible to Silence effects. At 5 mana, Glowstone Technician isn’t a big power play immediately, but it sets you up for some finishers if you time it right. Tossing it down with a big hand available buffs every one of your minions by +2/+2. You might even be able to make the tempo loss back up with a beefed-up cheap minion on the same turn. Regardless, Glowstone Technician, thanks to its buff down to 5 mana, gives you the opportunity for some really strong follow-ups.

Late Game: If you haven’t got a resounding lead by this point then it’s going to be tough going from here on out. You should still have a decent bit of fuel in hand though, and often you’ll just need that extra bit of firepower to finish off your opponent. Leeroy Jenkins is a great topdeck later on in the game, and if you can buff him up then you can surprise your opponent with a big bunch of burst damage. Blessing of Kings and Truesilver Champion can get you over the line too, so just keep an eye on your enemy’s health total and hit them with all the damage you can find.

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Hand Paladin tips, combos and synergies

Here are the combos you need to think about while playing this particular version of Hand Paladin.

- Brazen Zealot can spiral out of control if your opponent doesn’t deal with it in a timely manner. Combining it with Beaming Sidekick to boost both attack and health gives this card the potential to get you a big lead early on in games.

- Sandwasp Queen adds two 1 mana 2/1 Sandwasps to your hand. Whilst these don’t look scary on their own, playing out a Glowstone Technician sets you up for a hugely valuable turn, playing cheap, overstatted minions.

- Leeroy Jenkins benefits greatly from buff cards, as the Charge ability he has allows you to chuck all that damage directly at your opponent’s face. They might not expect you to have all that power immediately available, so chip their health total down and hit them with a final blow from your beefed up Leeroy..

- A lot of your cards are able to generate other cards. Jar Dealer and Ravencaller both add 1-cost minions to your hand, allowing you to keep the pressure up as much as possible when your opponent starts clearing minions away.

- Faceless Rager and Twilight Drake can be drawn through Salhet's Pride, despite their potential for extremely high health totals.

- Mountain Giant is a staple of any deck that relies on a big hand. Cheating out an 8/8 minion early can often be too much for your opponent to handle, and the fact that your cards allow you to increase your hand size whilst simultaneously developing the board make this a distinct possibility.

- Magic Carpet can be a good catchup mechanic. Your big bunch of 1-drops can immediately clear enemies away with the +1 attack and Rush granted by the carpet.

This is not the version you want to play... Strifecro's Handbuff is currently the most winning deck but Kolento just dropped two new decks "Dragon" and "Buff" yesterday that also have made it to Legend.

Yeah, you could play warrior or shaman instead of paladin... but as Eminem said: "I'd rather yank my f*ckin teeth before I'd ever bite my tongue
I'd slice my gums, get struck by f*ckin' lightning twice at once!
And die... and come back as vanilla ice's son
And walk around the rest of my life... spit on
And kicked and hit with shit, every time I sung
Like R. Kelly as soon as "bump n' grind" comes on!" ;)

@Angryana I'd remove one truesilver, getting any non minion cards in hand makes paladin's hand buffs worse so I'd rather Sally than truesilver, you have enough minions to trade cleanly most of the time without needing a weapon and happy rag takes care of any healing needs. I'd even possibly take out the second truesilver for a single consecration even 2 damage is enough to help clear the many murloc decks laddering currently. But without playtesting it myself (and not wanting to craft Don hancho) it really just speculation.

I feel the one card a lot of the standardised buff decks are missing is "Leeroy Jenkins". I've been able to build up enough buffs in the first few rounds to one shot opponents in rounds 5 and 6 with Leeroy...
At least I have chicken!

@Thimns I thought the same thing. Playing this deck, I think the biggest problem is having board clear options. Not sure what would be worth to take out for maybe at least one equality/consecration maybe.